"We are the only country in history that ever deliberately changed its ethnic makeup, and history has few examples of 'diversity' creating a stable society." - Richard Lamm, former governor of Colorado

Friday, February 02, 2007

Britain: A failed Turkish asylum seeker raped a young woman after going on the run to avoid being deported

Bilal Darioglu, 30, had exhausted all asylum applications and appeals when he disappeared in 2006.

Months later the Turkish national brutally raped the 19-year-old in the back of his car.

In court this week it emerged he evaded immigration officials simply by moving a few streets away from the address in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, he had originally given them.

The case piled fresh pressure on the crisis-prone Home Office, coming months after it emerged 100,000 unsuccessful asylum applicants had avoided deportation and 1,023 foreign convicts had not been sent home after release from prison.

The ease with which Darioglu was able to evade the authorities drew stinging criticism from MPs yesterday, with one Labour MP accusing the Home Office of "lurching from one scandal to the next".

Even the judge who jailed him for five years expressed grave doubts that he would be deported at the end of his sentence.

Judge John Jacobs said he did not have the "remotest confidence" it would happen.

"It's quite clear you should be deported," he told Darioglu. "As to whether that will happen, others will decide."

Darioglu, who is single, was smuggled into Britain in the back of a lorry in 2000.

A number of legal hearings - costing taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds - culminated in a judicial review at the High Court in November 2005.

Three months later a judge ruled his appliction to remain in the UK was "totally without merit".

He then changed address before immigration officials received permission to remove him, and started working illegally in a kebab shop.

Norwich Crown Court heard Darioglu attacked his victim on October 26 last year after she arrived at the takeaway as it closed following a night out with friends.

The defendant persuaded her to get into his car to buy some food at a supermarket.

The woman became concerned when he kept telling her to get some sleep on his back seat and she demanded to be let out.

But he drove her to another part of town where he raped her.

She escaped after kicking out at Darioglu and running naked to some nearby houses for help.

Prosecutor Matthew McNiff said: "She was sobbing hysterically and uncontrollably and she was rocking back and forth."

Darioglu initially claimed the woman was a prostitute who accepted £20 for sex but the court heard she was a "respectable young woman" with a job.

In a victim impact statement she said her life had been "totally ruined" by her ordeal.

She had lost her boyfriend and job because the emotional trauma of the attack turned her into a virtual recluse in her home.

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: "This is another in a worrying catalogue of very serious offences which could have been avoided had the asylum system not been in such a state of chaos."

South Norfolk Conservative MP Richard Bacon added the case was a "vivid illustration of the real danger to the public if the asylum and immigration system doesn't work properly".

Norwich North Labour MP Dr Ian Gibson said: "Somebody's head should roll for failing to carry out what should be an elementary job.

"We seem to lurch from one scandal to the next at the Home Office and it is an embarrassment, especially as we were elected on the back of a manifesto pledging to tackle immigration and crime."